Search results

This paper aims to explores the escapist journey that consumers embark on to reduce self-discrepancy, from the motivation to satisfy personal goals to the fulfilment of these goals. Escapism is a powerful concept for understanding why and how people resolve a perceived self-discrepancy. Previous research has provided rich and diverse insights into the motivations and goals, experience contexts and outcomes that are associated with escapism. However, these notions have been explored in an independent, piecemeal fashion that has hampered the development of cohesive theoretical foundations.

The authors conduct a qualitative study, relying on 33 journeys derived from 20 in-depth interviews, to understand and explain how escapism is initiated, formed and relived.

The findings document the existence of a predominantly utilitarian and a predominantly hedonic model, articulating why and how consumers pursue distinctly different types of escapist journeys. Utilitarian escapism is primarily concerned with the need to avoid negative emotional states, prompting consumers to decide impulsively to engage into routinised experience contexts to find relief. Hedonic escapism is primarily concerned with the desire to achieve positive emotional states. It involves lengthy and thoughtful anticipation, promotes consumers to pursue experiences in out of the ordinary contexts, and is realised when consumers obtain reward.

This study’s contributions present significant opportunities for further knowledge development.

The research findings have substantial practical ramifications for industry.

Understanding people’s needs to avoid the stress of everyday life (i.e. utilitarian escapism) and their desires to seek out excitement and pleasure (i.e. hedonic escapism) has important societal implications.

This research provides a robust theoretical foundation for escapism, one that is applicable across multiple settings. Findings are anchored within existing theory to articulate the notions of utilitarian and hedonic escapism, explaining why and how consumers engage in markedly different escapist journeys.

Financial literacy, capability and behavior are crucial factors in personal financial management, which in turn plays a significant role in individual and societal financial well-being. The objective of this investigation is to explain critical factors and dimensions of personal financial management systems by employing a hybrid approach that encompasses a bibliometric analysis and a systematic review of the literature.

The research team carefully evaluated a selection of 606 scholarly articles from the Scopus database and studied the evolution of personal financial management behavior over 38 years (1986–2023). This research adopted several graphical representations and network structures to comprehend publishing tendencies, high-impact papers, theoretical frameworks, intellectual constructs as well as the current state of research collaboration.

Four major clusters were identified in the field of personal financial management behavior: the relationship between financial literacy and financial capability, factors influencing financial behavior, the impact of financial behavior on financial well-being and the financial behavior of different demographic groups. In addition, by performing content analysis on papers published within the last five years, new themes in personal financial management behavior were identified.

This investigation serves to equip financial advisors, policy architects and scholarly investigators with a deeper insight into the intricacies of personal financial management behavior and aids in pinpointing prospective domains for forthcoming research.

This study seeks to address a significant vacuum in the current body of research by providing a thorough bibliometric analysis that specifically examines financial literacy, ability and conduct. To the best of our knowledge, no previous research has conducted such a comprehensive investigation in this field. This research aims to identify important researchers and influential works in the subject by using a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including content analysis. The purpose of doing this is to provide exclusive insights and expertise that can be highly valuable to scholars, practitioners, policymakers and other stakeholders who are interested in furthering the comprehension and encouragement of financial literacy and responsible financial behavior.